ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

The Power Of Cutting Loose On The Dance Floor

“A new season at London’s Southbank Centre is inspired by Emma Warren’s book Dance Your Way Home, about the potency of communal movement. She and other artists involved explain why the dance floor is their happy place.” - The Guardian

When Condé Nast Was Fat And Sassy (And Really Successful)

What these editors have in common more than some Horatio-Alger-with-a-pica-ruler climb is that they were good at their jobs. They had strong visions and were good at marshaling talent to execute them. They were also the avatars of a major generational turnover in Anglophone culture. - The New York Times

KQED, San Francisco Public Radio/TV, Lays Off 15% Of Staff

Approximately 50 positions are being eliminated, including the entire video division, as the Bay Area’s flagship public media outlet faces a projected $12 million deficit. Last year the station had an $8 million shortfall and laid off 34 staffers. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Four Smithsonian Museums Shut For Days Because Of HVAC Issues

The Hirshhorn, Asian Art, African Art and American Indian museums have been closed for about three days. - WTOP

The Kinds Of Books You Want To Read Over And Over

There are certain books where even if you’ve already solved the murder, even if you already know how it’s all going to turn out, you still don’t mind reading it again because the pleasure there isn’t really the ending but rather the journey. - LitHub

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SUMMER RERUN: Art Doesn’t Need to Be Served. People Do.

From 2024: The Mellon Foundation almost got it right for nonprofit arts leadership in the 2020s. ...

Photos as Art — Geometric Compositions of Spare Beauty

It is rare to receive a gift in the mail as pristinely attractive as Phil Scalia's immaculately produced 'Utification,' a chapbook of 28 remarkable photographs he took in Utica, New York.

Adrian Rodriguez talks about the importance of young people in the arts

Adrian Rodriguez, Director of Community Engagement, Chorus Director and Curriculum Manager of the Music Advancement Program at The Juilliard School, shares how to implement a commitment to young people as they develop in the arts.

Will Europeans Curate Our Receding Cultural Past?

My 2022 book Dvorak’s Prophecy has just been published in German (by Wolke Verlag) with a new Foreword for German-language readers: “The

Neil Barclay talks about the evolving landscape for BIPOC organizations

Neil Barclay, President & CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, talks the evolving landscape for BIPOC organizations and avenues for sustainability.

AI Companions Are Getting Really Good. But We Lose Something Creatively Important

Solitude is the engine of independent thought—a usual precondition for real creativity. It gives us a chance to commune with nature, or, if we’re feeling ambitious, to pursue some kind of spiritual transcendence. - The New Yorker

Why We Choose To Ignore Useful Information Right In Front Of Us

If the saying ‘knowledge is power’ is true, then most people hold an indefinite amount of power in their pockets. And, in this light, it’s curious that someone would choose to relinquish that power by avoiding information. - Psyche

What Brain Scans Reveal About Humans Seeking Revenge

Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances—real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization—activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. - Slate (MSN)

Doubt Can Fuel A Life Well Lived, And Maybe Take The Edges Off A Too-Certain Body Politic

“Certainty serves a powerful social identity function. Declaring a clear position, especially a strong one, signals belonging. … Certainty is rewarded not just with clarity, but with community. Ambivalence, by contrast, is lonely.” - Salon

On Bastille Day, Just How French Are The Irish?

And vice versa, of course. For instance: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Oscar Wilde all found some freedom in France, but Charles de Gaulle? He loved Ireland. - Irish Times

Saving Material History Isn’t Always Easy, But These Queer Communities Are Finding A Way

There’s “a growing wave of collaborative projects in which Latin American LGBTQ+ communities preserve and share their struggles and triumphs. They digitize photos, collect testimonies, and build databases of letters, personal memories, and other items that have survived dictatorships, censorship, and stigma.” - Wired

Australian Artists And Universities Could Have Funding Blocked If They Fail To Fight Antisemitism

“Universities and artists would have funding withheld if they fail to act against antisemitism, AI tools would be banned from sharing Jewish hatred, and the government would have new grounds to deport visitors under a wide-ranging plan put forward by Australia’s antisemitism envoy.” - The Guardian

How Italian Towns Selling Houses For €1 Changes Culture

The campaigns seemed to me to have been largely successful – some towns had sold all their listed properties. By attracting international buyers to a house that “costs less than a cup of coffee”, as one piece put it, some of Italy’s most remote towns now had new life circulating through them. - The Guardian

The Frustrations Of Advocating For The Arts

Advocacy emerges from discontent. In the arts, it’s often borne of witnessing creative practice undervalued, institutions destabilised and public funding eroded. These grievances are real and deeply felt. But passion alone, when untempered, can be self-defeating. - Arts Hub

Recent Rulings On AI And Copyright Leave The Issue More Confused Than Ever

On certain key points, the two judges disagreed with each other—so thoroughly, in fact, that one legal scholar observed that the judges had “totally different conceptual frames for the problem.” - The Atlantic

Social Prescription — When Doctor’s Orders Are Art, Music, Dance, Nature, Or Group Exercise

“It's the idea of health professionals ‘literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they'd prescribe you pills or therapies.’ ... The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health.” - NPR

Columbia University In Discussion To Pay Trump Administration $200 Million

Part of the money would be paid to the government, people familiar with the matter said. White House officials said the deal also includes payments to individual students and professors whose rights allegedly have been violated. - The Wall Street Journal

Electrical Recording Debuted 100 Years Ago This Year

“The ascent from one method (purely mechanical recording on a horn) to the other (electrical recording with a microphone) was more significant even than the later leaps from wax cylinder to flat disc, shellac to vinyl, mono to stereo, analogue to digital or CD to streaming.” - Gramophone

Rethinking Origins Of The Blues

What is original, real, and distinctive about black Southern culture is still often distorted or dismissed as primitive. And that is true not only in the South but in the wider American culture. - Hedgehog Review

Unreleased Music By Beyoncé Stolen From Car In Atlanta

“The theft of the materials, stored on five thumb drives, … along with footage, show plans and concert set lists, … happened on July 8, two days before Beyoncé began a four-day residency at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.” - AP

Hollywood Bowl LA Phil Season Opens On A Down Note

One of the highlights of this season has fallen victim to a baffling Venezuela travel ban. Gustavo Dudamel can no longer bring his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August. That now means that Dudamel will spend only a single week at the Bowl during his penultimate summer as L.A. Phil music director. - Los Angeles...

Restaurants Consider Ditching Recorded Music Because Of Higher Licensing Fees

The National Restaurant Assn. said its members pay an average of $4,500 per year to license music, or 0.5% of the average U.S. small restaurant’s total annual sales. “This may not seem like a large amount, but for an industry that runs on an average pre-tax margin of 3%-5%, this cost is significant." -...

La Scala To Ticket-Buyers: No Flip Flops! (We Mean It!!)

The venue is stepping up the enforcement of its dress code this summer, reminding patrons via signs in the foyer to dress “in keeping with the decorum of the theater.” The underdressed will not be allowed inside, according to its policy, which is also printed on tickets, nor will they be reimbursed. - The New...

Four Smithsonian Museums Shut For Days Because Of HVAC Issues

The Hirshhorn, Asian Art, African Art and American Indian museums have been closed for about three days. - WTOP

AI-Powered Robots Are Carving Sculpture From Stone. They Might Soon Be Changing The Way Buildings Are Built

The 2-year-old company is turning this aging warehouse into a modern stonecutting factory capable of quickly producing highly detailed decorative facades, museum-grade marble sculptures, and towering stone monuments. The company will soon be trying its robotic arms at an even grander project: reinventing the way buildings get built. - Fast Company

France’s Art Galleries Are Under Stress As The Market Changes

“We’re having trouble attracting young people, whereas in other countries, like China, buyers are on average in their thirties,” Magda Danysz, vice president of the CPGA, told Le Monde. “Priorities have changed in France too; it’s the experience more than the object.” - ARTnews

The Complete Replica Of The Bayeux Tapestry Made In 1885

To call this enormous replica, on display at the Reading Museum, complete is not to call it completely accurate, mind you. The thread is worsted and colored with synthetic dyes, so the colors are brighter, and — it was the Victorian era, after all — the original’s more lewd images were bowdlerized. - The...

UNESCO Names 32 New World Heritage Sites

The list includes four palaces built by Bavaria’s King Ludwig II; ancient rock art in Australia, Korea, and Russia’s Bashkir Republic; and three sites related to the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in Cambodia. - Artnet

An Ancient City Off The Coast Of Italy Re-emerges From The Sea

For centuries, Aenaria had existed somewhere between history and myth. Today, its rediscovery is reshaping Ischia's story – and offering travellers the rare chance each summer to dive into a piece of history once thought lost to the sea. - BBC

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RADAR Nonprofit Solutions is seeking an experienced Accounting Manager to perform the accounting activities for various clients in the arts and other nonprofit sectors.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra seeks a Director of Operations

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra seeks a Director of Operations to manage orchestra services, production, touring, and union compliance while fostering collaboration across departments and musicians.

Executive Director – Southeastern Theatre Conference

The Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC), the largest network of theatre practitioners in the US, seeks service-oriented & inclusive leader to serve as its Executive Director

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As it looks forward to its 87th season, Pittsburgh Opera—one of America’s most artistically respected opera companies—invites recommendations/applications for the position of General Director

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Williamstown Theater Festival Is Back From The Brink With A New Plan

“This summer, the ... latest leadership team has opted for a radically new and risky reboot: Instead of a summer-long season with two shows at a time, the company is leaning into the ‘festival’ part of its name, offering eight shows simultaneously, but only for three long weekends.” - The New York Times

The Most Talked-About Director In British Theatre

“Theatre is controversial again and it’s happened, surprisingly, in an Andrew Lloyd Webber revival” — the Evita in which Eva Perón sings to the crowd on the street — “at the London Palladium. ... And those buzzy shows that you heard about were probably directed by the same guy as this one: Jamie Lloyd.” - GQ

It Might Be Time To Revive This Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winner’s Plays

“Gale didn’t coin the term ‘think global, act local,’ but that’s what Sodality does: Gale’s stories imagine an anti-capitalist vision of ‘sodality’ that could extend across the world, if only women were in charge.” - LitHub

Can The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center Survive?

The venerated, invaluable theatre incubator is facing, like so many performance-related sites, money trouble. - The New York Times

The Avignon Festival Copes With Ever-Increasing Temperatures

Days over 100°F are no longer rare, with serious effects on audiences and workers. … Recent changes include eliminating performances between 2:00 and 5:00 p.m., the hottest hours, … (and) a new rule for international artists: If you’re coming from overseas, you must have other touring dates in Europe. - The New York Times

Bay Area Theatres Are Folding. The Theatre Landscape Is Collapsing

"We, in the nonprofit theater world, rely on a model that is really not working for anybody. It wasn’t working before the pandemic. The warning signs were there. Nonprofit theater relies on subscribers and grants to invest in a season before it opens." - KQED

The Power Of Cutting Loose On The Dance Floor

“A new season at London’s Southbank Centre is inspired by Emma Warren’s book Dance Your Way Home, about the potency of communal movement. She and other artists involved explain why the dance floor is their happy place.” - The Guardian

Mark Morris After 45 Years

Morris’s dance impulse is still very much alive. “We’re far from that time, 40 years ago, when it was a group of my peers,” Morris said. “But my way of working hasn’t changed that much.” - The New York Times

The Latest Korean Pop Culture Phenomenon? Swing Dancing

“For a vintage American cultural practice to spread overseas and thrive there more robustly than at home is a story at least as old as jazz. Not in every case, though, does the transplanted form evolve into a local variant. That’s what has happened in Korea.” - The New York Times

Milwaukee Ballet Will Use Live Orchestra For “Nutcracker” After All

Less than two weeks after the company announced that, due to financial troubles, it would use a recording of Tchaikovsky’s music for the next three seasons, an anonymous contribution by a first-time donor will fund the use of live musicians this year. The following two seasons, however, are not (yet) covered. - Urban Milwaukee

The New Zealand Men’s Rugby Team Had A Problem With Their Toes – Until They Studied Ballet

The issue with “turf toe” (a ligament stress, or tear) was ending careers - until a coach visited the New Zealand Ballet and asked pointed questions. - New Zealand Herald (Internet Archive)

The Struggle For Pregnancy Protections And Parental Leave In The Ballet World

“Because the policies that do exist vary so widely, dancers can be impacted in different ways depending on which company they’re a part of; whether they’re freelancers or full-time; and, in some cases, what their role is within the company.” - Elle

The Kinds Of Books You Want To Read Over And Over

There are certain books where even if you’ve already solved the murder, even if you already know how it’s all going to turn out, you still don’t mind reading it again because the pleasure there isn’t really the ending but rather the journey. - LitHub

US Publishers Charge Libraries Exorbitant Prices For E-Books. Some State Governments Want To Change That.

How exorbitant? A license for a digital copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 costs $51.99. Connecticut has already passed a law (not yet in effect) to rein in such pricing; New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Hawaii have similar legislation in the works. - The New York Times

The Biggest Mystery In Chaucer Was, It Turns Out, Probably A Typo

Okay, there were no typewriters then; it was a scribal error — and it led to serious confusion about genre. The eureka moment by two researchers at Cambridge makes sense of that confusion. - Mental Floss

Beetles Are Eating Their Way Through One Of Europe’s Oldest Libraries

At the Pannonhalma Archabbey, founded in 996, conservators are removing 100,000 books from the library shelves for disinfection from an infestation of bread beetles, which like to eat the gelatin and starch-based adhesives used in medieval books - AP

AI Slop Is Swamping Publishing

Creative professionals have long found themselves amid an existential crisis in a market where profits are slim and the vast majority of them will not make a living wage solely from their art. Those matters have become exacerbated tenfold by the speedy implementation of generative-AI technology within their spaces. - Paste

The Harvard Linguist Who’s Figured Out How Algorithms Have Shaped Our Language

“I want to balance being a ‘ha-ha funny’ TikToker with academic credibility. It’s a little hard to strike that balance when you are talking about ‘Skibidi Toilet’ on the internet.” - The New York Times

When Condé Nast Was Fat And Sassy (And Really Successful)

What these editors have in common more than some Horatio-Alger-with-a-pica-ruler climb is that they were good at their jobs. They had strong visions and were good at marshaling talent to execute them. They were also the avatars of a major generational turnover in Anglophone culture. - The New York Times

KQED, San Francisco Public Radio/TV, Lays Off 15% Of Staff

Approximately 50 positions are being eliminated, including the entire video division, as the Bay Area’s flagship public media outlet faces a projected $12 million deficit. Last year the station had an $8 million shortfall and laid off 34 staffers. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Public Broadcasting’s Last Ditch Efforts To Save Public Funding

Congress is expected to vote on that proposal, known as a rescission request, by the end of the week. If approved, it would end federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to NPR, PBS and local stations. - The New York Times

Poll: Public Broadcasting Is Overwhelmingly Popular With The American Public

Over half of Republicans (58%) and three-quarters of Democrats (77%) support federal funding for public radio. And 59% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats agree it is a good value for taxpayer dollars. - NPR

NYTimes Removes Four Longtime Critics From Their Beats

The quartet of Times critics — television critic Margaret Lyons, music critic Jon Pareles, theater critic Jesse Green and classical music critic Zach Woolfe — will “be taking on new roles, and we will be conducting a search for critics on their beats in the weeks to come." - Variety

More Trouble For BBC: 300,000 More Households Have Stopped Paying Licence Fee

“As the broadcaster continues to battle the rise of YouTube and streaming services that have split audiences ..., its annual report revealed 23.8m licences were in force at the end of the year, down from 24.1m in 2023-24. The drop means a loss of about £50m in revenue for the corporation.” - The Guardian

Poet Andrea Gibson, Subject Of Prizewinning New Documentary, Is Dead At 49

Gibson, spouse Megan Falley, and their four-year struggle with Gibson’s ovarian cancer are the main subjects of the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, winner of the Festival Favorite Award this year at the Sundance Film Festival and scheduled to air this fall on Apple TV+. - AP

Praemium Imperiale 2025 Winners: Marina Abramović, András Schiff, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Peter Doig, Eduardo Souto de Moura

It seems the categories for the $100,000 arts prizes this year were made a bit flexible: performance artist Abramović won the prize for sculpture and choreographer de Keersmaeker won the theatre/film award. Meanwhile, pianist Schiff won for music, artist Doig for painting, and Souto de Moura for architecture. - FAD Magazine

“Gorky Park” Author Martin Cruz Smith Dead At 82

“(He) had just published Hotel Ukraine, the 11th and final installment in his Arkady Renko detective series, three days before he died. The novel featured his detective hero grappling with the usual concerns — official corruption, a brutal murder — as well as the same debilitating illness faced by Mr. Smith.” - The Washington...

Charles Reinhart, Who Brought Modern Dance Into Prominence, Has Died At 92

He managed the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Meredith Monk, and he produced modern dance festivals in New York, but “it was as the director of American Dance Festival that Mr. Reinhart had an outlet commensurate with his ambitions.” - The New York Times

Bill Dilworth, The Keeper Of Walter De Maria’s Earth Room, Has Died At 70

“From the beginning, the Earth Room drew pilgrims, like the woman who visited a few decades ago and would stand silently for a bit and then start to laugh. Or the pre-med student who changed her major to soil studies after her first visit.” - The New York Times

Eric Idle, Embarking On A Post-Cancer Tour Of The UK, Has Some Choice Words For The US

The former Monty Python star: “I’ve had a green card for about 28 years. I’d be proud to be thrown out because I’d be in very select company. The last English comedian to be thrown out of America for political reasons was Charlie Chaplin.” - The Guardian (UK)
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